Charlie Brooker's Screen Burn

by Charlie Brooker

  You can’t relate to a man who cheats on his wife with a woman

  who’s probably dead by now: what is he, some kind of necrophile?

  It’s just stupid. No one ever watched Goodnight, Sweetheart and

  said admiringly: ‘It’s funny … ’cos it’s true!’ Inexplicably, it ran for

  years before finally suffocating under the weight of its own paradoxes.

  Harbour Lights

  Synopsis: Heartbeat-on-Sea.

  Comments: You want bland? Here’s bland: a series in which Nick

  Berry sails around gently solving wharf-related crime. Each punishing

  episode of Harbour Lights seemed to last nine weeks –

  which means somewhere, in another dimension, it’s still going on,

  right now.

  Selina Scott Meets Donald Trump

  Synopsis: Doe-eyed husky (aka the poor man’s Princess Di) meets the man who can afford everything except a plausible hairstyle. Comments: Trump started the show by introducing Scott to his buddies as ‘the legendary Selina Scott from Europe’. But the admiration dried up when he saw the finished product: a hatchet job. Viewers could only sit there and argue over which of the two was the least likeable.

  Jim Davidson’s Generation Game

  Synopsis: End-of-the-pier meets end of days.

  Comments: What do you do when you’ve got a tired old variety format

  that’s dying on its arse? Why, hire no one’s favourite comedian

  to host it, of course. The result was a hideous collision of bafflingly

  witless sketches, clumsy pratfalling and gor-blimey condescension

  that made Chucklevision look like Frasier.

  H&P@BBC

  Synopsis: The show that killed off Hale and Pace.

  Comments: You think that title’s bad? Trust me, things went downhill

  from there. It was hard to work out just what H&P@BBC was

  supposed to be. Sketch show? Audience participation cabaret? Sorrowful

  requiem? Hale and Pace didn’t seem to know. Viewer reaction

  was so negative, the show got pushed back further and further

  in the schedules until it was virtually appearing early the following

  morning.

  Anything Hosted by Steve Penk

  Synopsis: The only man in Britain who makes you appreciate Denis

  Norden.

  Comments: Despite being cursed with the kind of demented, boggle-

  eyed stare you’d expect to find on a haunted doll in a Hammer

  Horror quickie, the erstwhile Capital Radio prankster has forged a

  sturdy televisual career as the ‘racy’ alternative to Denis Norden.

  He now fronts hour-long ‘naughty’ clipfests in which the single

  gag is that someone from Emmerdale fluffs their lines and says

  ‘fuck’.

  LA Pool Party

  Synopsis: California Uber Alles.

  Comments: Take Jayne Middlemiss, Tess Daly and Lisa Snowdon,

  an LA mansion, some low-grade celebrities and about 100 Californian

  pod people and what have you got? A talk show in which you

  can’t hear what anyone is saying coupled with a Stepford Wives-

  style nightmare vision of the future. The standard viewer reaction

  was to smack the screen in with a bloody big spade, which may or

  may not have been the whole idea.

  ‘Adult’ Hollyoaks

  Synopsis: Racier, late-night version of the soap, starring Chapman

  Brothers’ dummies.

  Comments: Ever watched EastEnders and thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be

  funny if, like, Phil suddenly got his winky out, or Dot said “bollocks”

  or something?’ Late-night Hollyoaks proved the answer is

  ‘no’. Forced to justify its ‘red light’ slot by tossing in the odd swearword

  or flash of buttock, things reached a nadir when a character

  absent-mindedly tried to brush their teeth with a vibrator. Please,

  we’re not this stupid. And if we want to see the Hollyoaks girls in

  their underwear, we only need glance at the blokey shelf in the

  newsagents. You can’t build a show around a fleeting masturbatory

  fantasy. Well, not unless you’re Dennis Potter.

  Doctor Who the Movie

  Synopsis: Crazy Like a Who.

  Comments: And you thought things had gone downhill with the

  introduction of Sylvester McCoy. In 1995 the BBC joined forces with

  the Yanks to make a pilot for a proposed future series of big-budget

  Who-jinks that foolishly replaced the original series’ eccentric

  charm with cookie-cutter action bullshit. Paul McGann as the Doctor?

  OK! Eric Roberts as the Master? Hmmm. Doctor Who bombing

  through an American city on a motorbike? Piss off.

  They Think It’s All Over

  Synopsis: Boorish pub jabbering brought to you at the licence-payers’

  expense.

  Comments: I hate sport, and I hate blokes shouting in pubs, so

  They Think It’s All Over was always going to leave me cold. What I

  couldn’t have foreseen is what a thumping big success it’d be.

  What are they up to now, series 85? Somehow, this self-satisfied

  prick parade always conspires to be on television at the precise

  moment I desperately need something to watch in order to

  stave off the suicidal despair that’s been hanging around since

  that morning’s Trisha. I’ve lost count of the times it’s nearly killed

  me.

  Dishonourable Mentions …

  You could fill an encyclopaedia with this rubbish. Space prevents

  me from going into detail on the following, but simply reading the

  titles alone should be enough to set sickbombs bursting in your

  head: Dotcomedy; The Girlie Show; Crocodile Bloody Shoes; Metro-

  sexuality; Bushell on the Box; All About Me; Bonjour La Classe;

  Blind Men (brilliantly, a sitcom about men who sell blinds), Temptation

  Island; Pie in the Sky; Rockface/Merseybeat/Holby City et al.;

  Soldier, Soldier; Days Like These;’ Orrible; Sam’s Game; Babes in the

  Wood; Married for Life (Russ Abbot takes on Married with Children

  and loses); The Vicar of Bumming Dibley; TFI Friday; The House of

  Eliott; Peak Practice; Robot Wars; Airport/Airline/The Cruise/any

  fly-on-the-wall doc set in a shoeshop etc.; any cheapo, CGI effects-fest,

  e.g. Timegate; Littlejohn; Boys and Girls; Model Behaviour. Oh

  – and the Late Bastard Bastard Bastard Review.

  There. Think that about covers it. Here’s to the next decade.

  Another Dignity-Shredding Festival [3 May]

  They said it would never happen. Actually, that’s not true – they said it most definitely would. And it did. I’m a Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here (ITV1) is back, packed with people going mental, screaming and getting wet down under, just like the front row at a Blue concert.

  I’m a Celebrity was the surprise hit of 2002, so with the thudding inevitability of night following day, ITV has pulled out all the stops (well, OK, three or four of the stops) for this year’s new, dramatically unimproved sequel.

  For starters, we’ve got more celebrities to choose from: ten to be precise, which is too many for the human brain to process all at once, which means you’re surprised every few minutes – it’ll cut to a shot of Wayne Sleep and you’ll hear yourself going, ‘Ooh, I’d forgotten he was in this.’ Sleep’s probably the most famous one in there. The rest are a motley collection whose stars glow so dimly in the showbusiness firmament, they’re 50 per cent less famous than the red laughing cow that appears on a range of dairy products. So who are they? Here’s a handy cut-out-and-keep list:
r />   1) Antony Worrall Thompson. Fresh from his success playing the dwarf warrior in The Two Towers, Worrall Thompson has already made a mark in the Celebrity camp by smuggling in a sachet of cooking spices strapped to his inner thigh, which means his scrotum’s going to smell like a pair of greasy dumplings with cumin for the rest of the series. He’s also lost weight, and now looks less like Henry the Eighth and more like an ageing Kiefer Sutherland.

  2) Chris Bisson. A huge non-entity. Such a personality vacuum, in fact, his presence gives rise to an interesting philosophical question: if a tree falls in the rainforest when only Chris Bisson is there to see it, does it make a sound?

  3) Sian Lloyd. Flirtatious Welsh weather girl with a hint of Wallace and Gromit round her chops. She’s a close pal of Huw Edwards, apparently, so if a freak tornado whips through the camp and everyone dies, his face during the news afterwards should be an absolute picture.

  4) Phil Tufnell. A cricketer, which means I’ve no idea who he is, and on the evidence thus far, I haven’t missed anything. They should replace him with Ray Mears, who’d construct a jacuzzi out of bark within 10 minutes of arrival, then brew up some funnel-web-spider beer and watch them all get nekkid. Yee haw!

  5) Catalina. Famous for playing the ‘sexy girl’ in TFI Friday’s ‘Ugly Bloke’ segment and … that’s … it. Still, at least she can open her mouth and make sounds come out, unlike Nell McThingbags last time round.

  6) John Fashanu. My flatmate is convinced Fashanu’s voice occasionally becomes a perfect replica of Frank Spencer. Once you’ve noticed it, it’s impossible to take Fashanu seriously – just as well, since he seems to be undergoing some kind of frightening mental collapse, and it’s nice to be able to distance yourself from it a bit through the miracle of laughter.

  7) Linda Barker. A glorified B&Q assistant who might as well be replaced by a mop for all I care. The same goes for number 8, the eerily feline Wayne Sleep. Vote ’em off.

  9) Danniella Westbrook – it’s traditional for Celebrity to feature an ex-cokehead, and Westbrook’s this year’s candidate. With any luck a community of cockroaches will start nesting in her nose and liven things up for all of us.

  10) Finally, Toyah Willcox, more scary now than during her punk days. At the risk of sounding cruel, she resembles a 98-year-old woman in pigtails, and every time she comes onscreen I think I’m watching that scene in The Others where Nicole Kidman’s daughter turns round, revealing a terrifying, prematurely aged fizzog.

  Who’ll win? Who cares? It’s another dignity-shredding festival, and none the worse for that. Besides, it’s already nearly killed Worrall Thompson, who narrowly avoided being crushed by a falling lump of tree within minutes of arrival. And any show that does that deserves the support of the entire nation.

  The Australian Revolution [10 May]

  We’ve had the French Revolution. We’ve had the Russian Revolution. But both pale into dull insignificance compared to the great Australian Revolution of 2003. Years from now, our descendants will make a pilgrimage to Trafalgar Square to lay flowers at the feet of Antony Worrall Thompson’s memorial statue. And, as the bugler sounds his reveille, they’ll lower their heads in respect for this inspirational rebel, this rotund colossus – he who taught us to rise up, stare the forces of reality television in the eye and say, ‘Enough!’

  Seriously though, last week’s I’m a Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here (ITV1) revolt – aborted though it was – could bring about a new phase in the ongoing advancement of reality shows. For those who missed it (and being a Guardian reader, you were probably off on BBC4 watching a harpsichord masterclass, like a great big ponce), the ten-strong group of celebrity campers reached snapping point and threatened to walk out en masse if they didn’t get a decent meal.

  The producers, sisting of nine single sausages and a bit of old bark, were at pains to make it look as though the ‘stars’ were being a bunch of precious whingers – but the fact is the producers were in the wrong, and if the entire camp had walked, the programme would have ended there and then. ITV would’ve had the production team lined up against a wall and shot. Probably in a Saturday night special hosted by Ant and Dec (two men who magically remain blameless whatever the circumstances – even if they hosted a live show in which sick children were torn to ribbons by wolves they’d somehow come across as likeable).

  Accordingly, the producers caved in, bent over and took it like suckers, right there on the telly – on their own show! Never mind their face-saving bullshit about providing an alternative meal of ‘identical calorific value’ – we saw the replacement with our own eyes, you cowards: steak and potatoes, a whopping great feast by comparison. A victory for the inmates, and hopefully an inspiration to all subsequent reality contestants – direct action works!

  It’s just a shame the campers merely issued threats. If I was in that group, I’d have grabbed Ant or Dec during the live section and held them to ransom by holding a jagged piece of flint to their throat. Never mind steak and potatoes – I’d demand a helicopter, 50 per cent of the show’s production fee in cash and a blow job from every single member of the crew, even the no-nonsense Australian safety instructor. In fact, especially the no-nonsense Australian safety instructor. And, under those circumstances, I’d probably get it.

  Anyway, the upshot of it all is that Worrall Thompson has now gone up in my estimation by about 10,000 per cent. The same is also true of Danniella Westbrook, who showed Fashanu up as the oddball faux-ninja chicken he is by gamely undertaking her ‘bush tucker trial’ with palpable relish. Cockroaches crawled in her hair, maggots frolicked in her cleavage, and this ass-kicking survivor simply laughed it all off. Fashanu would’ve screamed, hyperventilated, punched invisible samurai assassins and generally squealed like a pantomime dame being goosed by Dick Whittington. Danniella, by contrast, has gone from a national joke to the next Lara Croft simply by being game for anything. Better still, in the end, she didn’t even give a toss about winning the damn programme. Missing her kids, missing her boyfriend, and literally bored to tears, Westbrook did the sensible thing and bolted. Perhaps if they’d given her more to do she’d have stuck around, but they didn’t, and I admire her ah-well-bollocks-to-it attitude.

  Worrall Thompson and Westbrook – recast as heroes. Proof that we’re living in unpredictable times. And equally possibly, proof that I need a good lie-down. I’m off for a week. See you in a fortnight.

  The Spanish Inquisition with Cooler Haircuts [24 May]

  Tick tock, tick tock … I’ve held off writing about 24 for weeks on end now, largely because last time round I became so obsessed with it I rarely mentioned anything else, and readers who weren’t following the series got so bored with each column they’d nod off in the middle, wake up with backward newsprint all over their foreheads, then spend the rest of the day wondering why strangers were squinting at them in the street.

  That said, now seems like a good time to assess where this second series of 24 (BBC2) is heading. Or ‘Carnival of Torture’, as it might as well be called, given the amount of violent interrogation going on. You can’t go 10 minutes without bumping into a torture scene – it’s like the Spanish Inquisition with cooler haircuts.

  So far we’ve had electrocution, scalpel hi-jinks, finger-breaking and a particularly touching interlude in which Kate Warner’s private detective had his spine carved out with some kind of rotating-blade power tool. Product placement for a new range of Black & Decker gizmos aimed at oppressive regimes? I wouldn’t discount it.

  Jack Bauer’s a particularly efficient inquisitor, ready to extract even the most trivial information via gruesome means – clearly, Jack’s suffering from horrendously chapped lips, probably incurred during the plane crash he survived a couple of hours ago, because he spent most of last week’s episode threatening to shoot a suspect’s entire family, starting with the kids, unless he told him the location of ‘the balm’. ‘Tell me where the balm is!’ ‘Where’s the balm!?!’ At one point he even claimed that ‘milli
ons will die unless you tell me where the balm is’ – the man’s lost his mind.

  And he’s not the only one. Even mild-mannered President Palmer’s got the torturin’ bug, sanctioning the repeated electrocution of the head of the NSA – a decision that initially caused Palmer no end of soul-searching (as indicated in traditional Palmer fashion, i.e. by flaring his nostrils and lolling his head around like a punch-drunk bull), but obviously grew on him, because he spent the next hour watching the proceedings on a private video link in his office, in a manner not entirely dissimilar to a man illicitly viewing pornography in the basement while his wife sleeps upstairs.

  If Palmer keeps this up, by the end of the series he’ll be stalking the corridors of the Mexican restaurant that seems to double as his HQ, wearing a long dark cloak, wielding a scimitar and insisting on being addressed as ‘His Dark Highness Torquemada the Pitiless’. At which point Radioactive George Mason, who by then will have mutated into a lesion-covered Hulk-like monster, will fight him to the death on the roof of the White House.

  None of which would be any less preposterous than Kim’s ongoing ‘storyline’, which increasingly resembles an entire series of ‘The Perils of Pauline’ reduced to the length of a diet Coke commercial and starring Britney Spears. Things reached a ludicrous high with the whole chased-by-a-cougar sequence, something I suspect was written into the script as a joke while the producer was on holiday; you can tell by the way it was abruptly done away with in the very next episode – as though the boss had gone away saying, ‘Don’t do anything stupid,’ then came back and said, ‘You did WHAT?’

  So what happens next? Being a downloadin’ Internet smart arse-stroke- bore, I already know, of course … but hardened 24 addicts alarmed at the prospect of ‘spoilers’ can rest easy, because I’m not about to spoil what’s still the best show on the television by spilling the plot beans … although I will tantalise you with the following question: which of the following names genuinely, honestly joins the cast of 24 to play a major character in later episodes?